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Monday, March 03, 2014

Zachary "Jick" Johnson's Sea Monkees

Note: As promised, the battle logs for my final showdown with Dad Sea Monkee in Kingdom of Loathing (cleaned up for easier reading). Excellent writing, and I could really say that the thirteen ascensions over two months were worth it.

You step through the doors. The water inside holds the stillness of untold ages.

Past the door there is a wooden table. On the table there is a bowl of fruit.

"Of course there is," you think to yourself. "Of course there is."

You peel the banana. The banana is your skin. You twist the stem from the pear. The pear is the scales on your eyes. You stomp the apple. The apple is Peanut. I'm sorry, Peanut. Next time, kiddo. Next time will be different, I promise.

You step through the door into a silent room with featureless white
walls. In the center there sits a massive machine, the source of the
noise. Pipes lead from the machine to ports on the blackened walls,
pumping strange liquids into and out of the tank.

In the tank, floating, almost peacefully, is Dad. His eyes are open but
vacant. In them you see your reflection, standing in a tiny room.
White. Silent. Black. Deafening.

The room is the machine occupies the room contains the machine contains
the room describes the machine creates the room is the machine.

You shake your head and look above the tank, at the window into space.
Rotting forms swim in the darkness, each more bloated than the last.
Space warps, slowly revealing 48-dimensional monstrosities.

No.
Look again. There is nothing. Is your grasp on reality betraying you?
As if on cue, 17-sided triangles materialize and then disappear. So
impossible that your head throbs.

You have to end this.

You smell the decaying flesh of an ancient carcass, as big as a thousand thousand suns. You conjure up a rotten egg and hurl it at your opponent. You summon a whirling tornado of toys. A distant nebula's shape is painfully suggestive. You squeegee some oil from your nose and flick it skywards.A bolt of grease strikes your opponent. A baleful eye stares at you from the depths of space. You raise your right hand in the air and conjure an immense fireball.
It makes your right hand red, like Nick Cave's right hand. You spin in a circle, conjuring up a cyclone of frost. The cyclone hits your opponent, leaving it as cold as ice. The chill of infinity coats your face in frost. The heat of a dying star scorches your bung. You raise your hands in the air and conjure an immense fireball in each of them. That's a hot pair of balls you've got there! The chill of infinity coats your arse in frost. You call for backup, and a zombie emerges from the ground nearby.

Some critical part has burned out. The window is now one-way. You look
behind the machine and find where it's plugged into the wall. Amazing
that all this was powered by a single 110 circuit.

You unplug the machine. Dad's eyes close. There is a flash, and you are back in front of the Temple.